If you read more on the whole ordeal, you'll find the following items:

1. Tom Chick was paid a one-time flat fee for the manual for GC2
2. Tom Chick excused himself from reviewing GC2 and in fact tries to avoid reviewing any Stardock products
3. He didn't like Sword of the Stars and his review reflected that.  A lot of people, completely unconnected to GC2 disliked the game, as is their right.  If they liked GC2, that likely did not impact their opinion of SotS (as well as the other way around)

SotS and GC2 don't really compete, they're technically the same genre, but focus on completely different aspects of gameplay. SotS doesn't want to micromanage planets and instead focuses on a low-management style of planetary building, and tries to direct the player as much as possible into the tactical combat and multiplayer aspects.  GC2 is more focused on empire management and has an abstracted combat system that the user can not directly control.  It's like comparing Age of Empires 3 to Perimeter.  They're both RTS games, but so drastically different they don't stand for much comparison.  Genres are very broad and have lots of nooks and crannies a game can hide in. 

Also, the games came out 6 months apart.  In the gaming universe, that's practically an eternity.  If anything, one being successful helps the other as it raises awareness of the genre and once you play one 4X TBS Space game, you'll probably want to see what else is out in the market.  So since they weren't directly competing even for sales or shelf space, a bad review wouldn't do much good to keep one down to prop up the other.

Tom has no vested interest in knocking SotS down.  SotS succeeding doesn't preclude GC2 or future SD games from doing well.  SotS failing due to bad reviews doesn't ensure our future success.  SotS/Kerberos and GC2/Stardock will rise or fall on the merits of their titles individually, the two don't tie together.  If anything, success of any company or title in the strategy genre will most likely (at least in some way) help everyone else in the genre.

Like I said, SotS and GC2 aren't really competing products.  They compete in so much as any game competes with any other game released in a certain period of time of each other.  Technically, WoW competes against every game released in the past two years, and that will be released in the next few years.  Writing anything for WoW doesn't preclude you from being involved in the rest of the games industry for fear of a conflict of interest.

GC2 and SotS compete when a gamer is faced with the choice of one or the other and only has $50 to spend at that moment.  Only then, and only until they have another $50 and want their 4x strategy fix, and the numbers of people in such a predicament are going to overall be small since the games were released half a year apart.  Game adoption rates are heavy in the first month or two and start to slip steadily from that point on.  Should the guy who wrote the Baldur's Gate manual back in the 90s never be allowed to review an RPG game because he may have some long-hidden love for all things Bioware?  If the two games came out in the same quarter and were vying for the same customers at launch, sure there might have been some conflict.  You hear people commenting about it on forums, but forums have always represented a very vocal minority.

The only conflict of interest that would exist for Tom is if he took money from us and then reviewed or own games.  In that case, he might be inclined to give us favorable reviews to avoid pissing us off so we'd continue to to give him work... but like I said, he excused himself from that potential conflict.

Gotta love stupid generalisations like that one.
I'm a GC2 player AND I like SotS.

edited by moderator.  Let's stay on the less burning side of flame war, ok?